President Carter's Comprehensive National Urban Policy: Achievements and Lessons Learned

In 1978, President Carter promulgated the first ‘comprehensive’ national urban policy for the USA. The major thrust of the policy was to ameliorate economic and fiscal problems of distressed cities. The policy achieved only modest success, and was quickly swept away by the Reagan Administration. In this paper, the policy is reviewed, and the major factors which limited its success are identified. It is concluded that the major problems were inherent political and substantive barriers to effective urban policy, not fortuitous events or mistakes of the Carter Administration. These inherent problems will likely forestall future US efforts to implement an urban policy. An understanding of the problems is important for policymakers in other nations, particularly European nations which are now facing urban problems similar to those which generated the US effort.